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  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, removing his shades and hanging them from his uniform by a single leg of the frame. He was resigned to his fate, he only hoped that in perishing with dignity in this impossible situation that he had managed to save Annika from a worse fate.

  The substance was hot, he could feel it radiating heat as it drew close to his foot. The temptation was to simply dive into the pooling darkness and get it over with rather than have it creep up on him, at least then he would be in control of the exact moment of his demise.

  There was a faint clicking sound, and the humming of the forcefield ceased. Smith turned and stared incredulously at the open space with a raised eyebrow before diving to safety.

  He was out of the cell. He was safe. He could pursue Annika.

  A large, scaled hand clamped itself down upon his shoulder and thrust him back toward the room. He rebounded off the reactivated forcefield and fell to the floor in a daze, watching as the Voravian keyed in a few buttons to some wrist-mounted computer and then smacked at it angrily with his fist when the field refused to deactivate.

  Smith tried to reorientate himself but found that he was completely helpless, the clawed hand raked down his neck and started dragging him down the corridor and deeper into the giant ship.

  Annika blinked away tears as she rounded the corner and out of the sight of the pulsing forcefield and her failure to rescue Agent Smith.

  She had never even known his first name. Throughout this crazy adventure they had been thrust into together she had never thought to ask, and now he was gone.

  Clearing her throat, she stiffened her resolve and marched onward, she couldn't sit here and be sorry for herself because of what had happened. Smith himself had he been here would have demanded they press forward and kept a modicum of professionalism in doing so.

  Now if only she knew where she was going.

  Aware that the ship was vast in size, Annika surmised that there were any number of possible locations for her to have ended up. If only she had access to a set of scanners or equipment with which to aid her analysis, then she could determine where their own ship was. There was no doubt in her mind that the materials used by the Voravians to construct this gargantuan vessel were vastly different from those that comprised a Star Command ship. The sensors would have picked up on that instantly, if she had been in possession of any.

  She sensed there was no sense in regretting sensors that she didn't have the sense to have throughout this nonsense. She had to stay true to her survival training that she had acquired from the cargo ships prior to joining Star Command, out there on the frontier you only had yourself to look after. It was simply a regression to that place in her life, albeit inside a massive ship rather than the vast emptiness of space.

  She kept close to the walls, knowing that it probably wouldn't make much difference if a Voravian were to spot her. Having seen reports of the lizards she didn't fancy her chances in hand to hand combat.

  She froze as she heard the sound of feet plodding their way around the corner. Lowering herself into a crouching position, she launched herself just as the first of the Voravians came into sight.

  They landed in a flurry of limbs, and she was quick to disarm the thing of its blaster, pinning it between her legs and preparing to level a shot at its face.

  'Well hello there!' the creature exclaimed with a sleazy grin. 'Aren't you a feisty one?'

  With a growing horror, she realised who it was that she had just straddled.

  Trigger watched on in disbelief as Annika, who had appeared out of nowhere, slowly disentangled herself with great difficulty from the clutches of the amorous Captain Darwin, who didn't seem to be helping all that much. Eventually RJ bodily lifted her away from the man, handing Trigger the plasma rifle.

  He felt the warm pulse of it in his shaking hands, trying his best not to point it at anyone or drop it. He had vaguely seen the power of this gun and the thought of discharging it now quite frankly terrified him. Trigger didn't fancy flying fifty feet in any direction, that was for sure.

  'Where's Agent Smith? Did you encounter any Voravians from back where you came?'

  Annika shook her head, but said no more, apparently this Smith character hadn't made it. Trigger had more than a suspicion that whatever trial they had faced, it had been beyond the man.

  RJ also seemed to note that something had gone terribly wrong, he put a comforting hand over Annika's shoulder and to Trigger's surprise she didn't flinch away. His touch was nothing like Darwin's, that was for sure.

  'We're going to have to go back the way you came, Annika.' the man said with his sympathetic Texan twang, completely ignoring Captain Darwin's attempts to lead them and the potential Voravians doubling up to hunt them down. 'Are you ready to do that? Because we're going to need you here.'

  She nodded at them and they set off after Darwin, leaving Trigger alone with the plasma rifle.

  He thought he heard the sounds of digging claws, but didn't have any chance to verify this as his flying feet had soon caught up with the rest of the crew. Nobody said a word about his reappearance and he began to feel increasingly invisible, as if he were back on the Scavanger all over again.

  As they wound through the corridors Trigger found it difficult to believe that the Voravians hadn't found a way around the blockage that RJ had caused. Surely there were other corridors that led here? If there weren't, then they had no way back to the ship.

  The corridors seemed to close in on him, as if threatening to swallow him whole unless he ran screaming from them. He couldn't leave now though, these people were his only protection from the Voravians. If he were to abandon them then he would be toast in a matter of moments, he knew it.

  They all proceeded forward with what seemed to Trigger like a minimum of caution and a leisurely pace, as if they were out for a stroll instead of being pursued in the heart of enemy territory by possibly man-eating green things.

  Okay, so perhaps he had made the last bit up, his point still stood though!

  A giant siren went off and pulsed through his ears painfully, making him jump vertically as he was wont to do. Well, it made sense for somebody to sound the alarm now that they had escaped.

  Strange hissing and gurgling noises came over what sounded like an intercom, then died off as soon as they had arrived. Had their position been spotted? Were they on the brink of being intercepted and blown to pieces?

  They rushed around the corner and he heard Annika let out the slightest of sighs, he could feel the waves of fear and sadness come off her like some odd radiating particles. It did his own tensions absolutely no good whatsoever, though they were temporarily abated by the confusing sight that lay ahead.

  There was a hissing noise that sounded nothing like a Voravian and originated from ahead where a black slimy mess was puddling over the floor plating of the corridor. The fumes were heady and Trigger couldn't help but cough, then wondered if they were poisonous and if he had doomed himself by following these people.

  Shielding his mouth, he watched RJ do the same and approach the substance with Annika following swiftly. Judging from her quickness to reach the matter, this differed greatly from what she had been expecting to see.

  'This is the chamber I escaped from, where I was forced to leave Agent Smith.'

  RJ nodded, pointing at the doorway the black treacle-like ooze it had come from. 'You said there was a forcefield in place, presumably to prevent your escape. Why would this goop spill on out into the corridor if it had been activated the whole time you left?'

  Hope flickered in Annika's eyes. 'RJ, you're right!' Then she subsided into coughing.

  'Looks like both Captain Jones and Agent Smith might be giving these varmints more than they reckoned for.'

  Trigger didn't feel their wild surge of joy at that though, as they were still hopelessly far away from the ship and he had just begun to hear the tapping sounds of many scaled feet heading toward them.

  Chapter 25

  T
hrone! Bowling! Wires!

  The door he had just been coerced through led out onto a large concourse that Phil gazed briefly at before being dragged further into the depths of this huge ship and its strange simulations.

  He passed down corridors that twisted and turned, never once meeting a Voravian aggressor. He vaguely hoped that he had the glove to thank for that, one minute it pulled him through one corridor and the next he had found himself doubling back to avoid trouble. That or it had a very poor sense of humour and this was all a giant practical joke on its part.

  As if sensing the thought, the glove gave him a disapproving squeeze, it had yet to verbally or mentally communicate its disapproval of him. In spite of this Phil thought that with the painful squeezing and tugging it seemed to be doing a fine job of conveying it to him.

  There came the noises of scaled feet ahead, the glove didn't even need to tell Phil to turn and go back the other way. The only problem with this was that there were scaled feet coming from behind him as well.

  Phil searched frantically for a passageway out of here or anything to prevent him from dying a terrible and painful death at the hands of the Voravians. Judging by the inactivity from the glove there was no such thing, he was cornered.

  He reached down to his belt for his blaster, before realising that he had been stripped if it by the Voravians before being placed into that room with the boxes. He was trapped, with no possible way of defending himself.

  The Voravians from either side appeared simultaneously, as if it had all been planned with some kind of clockwork efficiency.

  Phil threw his hands up in the air and they raised their weapons, causing him to shout in alarm. The head Voravian refused to fire though, peering at him as if wondering what the silly human was doing with his arms raised.

  They clearly didn't know the signal for surrender, or 'don't shoot'. This was going to end badly.

  Except that it didn't do that at all. The Voravians fired precisely nothing, instead standing there as if waiting for something to happen. Except nothing happened at all, which prompted the Voravians to call Phil's arm-raising bluff and press their guns into his back, leading him at the centre of a marching square to some unknown part of the ship.

  The pink glove didn't seem to complain about this inconvenience either, Phil found himself oddly surprised to be alive. He had assumed that they'd just shoot him, why wouldn't the just shoot him? He suppressed the thought, hoping that the creatures weren't overly telepathic. They could have something far worse in store for him yet.

  Indeed, when the large cargo doors opened and revealed a giant toad of a creature sitting upon an equally giant throne, Phil Jones realised that there was indeed far worse in store for him.

  With a strange croaking noise, the creature beckoned his warriors to bring Phil closer so that he may inspect him. Or at least, that's what he hoped the thing was saying, he wasn't overly fluent in croak.

  Seeing as it was pointless to resist, Phil gave little resistance as they dragged him closer to the horrid creature, though not so close as to allow him to somehow break free of the hold and attack. Not that he was exactly planning on doing that any time soon. He may have the weight advantage on these lizard things but their painful grip suggested there was nothing but muscle underneath the green-skinned hides of those guarding him.

  With another beckoning of the creature's hand, the far bay doors opened and revealed several more guards, ushering in another captive that hung limply from their arms. Ushering was Phil's polite substitution for 'dragging semi-consciously across the floor'.

  As the lights flickered over him, Phil realised it was Smith, that was a very bad sign indeed. If the creatures could capture and incapacitate his head of security then it certainly didn't bode well for the rest of the crew. Presumably they were locked away somewhere too, the thought only crossed his mind briefly as he was more concerned with not dying right now.

  They seated the obviously-drugged Smith at the foot of the creature's chair between his large flabby legs, this prompted the presumed leader of the Voravians to slap his hands down over the man's head, almost engulfing it entirely. Phil hoped that Smith could breathe under all that lizard flesh.

  His security officer's head sprang up as if suddenly alert and a glimmer of hope passed through Phil, only to be replaced with emptiness when he began to speak.

  'You are the large one of your crew. You are the enemy.'

  It was definitely Smith making these noises, but Phil had no doubt that they weren't of his own volition. It sounded all wrong as the Voravian used him as a mouth-piece to translate his own croaking.

  'I am the large one of my crew.' Phil heard himself saying, without even realising he'd opened his mouth to speak. Was he merely a mouth-piece for an entirely different form of control? The glove on his hand tightened, silencing the thought in such a crucial situation.

  'You will surrender to us, or be destroyed.' the leader replied, clearly not a master at the subtle art of diplomacy.

  'No.' Phil found himself saying, then waited for the crucial words to come pouring out that would convince this large creature to cease all hostilities.

  The silence seemed to lie heavy on the room as the single word echoed away, Phil waited patiently for the follow-up but it appeared that the glove was trying to outdo his opponent in brevity.

  Phil hadn't known of the word brevity until that point in time, apparently this was the glove's way of explaining what it was doing to him.

  'Then you shall die.' the corpulent Voravian informed him, releasing its hands from Smith's head and letting the man slump unconsciously to the floor.

  He should have been terrified, or at least wetting himself in trepidation of what was to come, instead he found a confident smile had slowly crawled its way across his face.

  His foe croaked something to the soldiers and they raised their weapons menacingly at him, surely there was no escaping at this range?

  The glove tugged at him violently and he went with the insistent movement, flying directly at the guard on the right and bowling into him just as he got his shot off.

  A roar from the other side of the room indicated that the shot had left a fatal mark on one of the other guards as the room erupted into a chorus of blaster fire.

  Rolling clear of the scorched body that had protected him from the initial bolts, Phil tangled with two other Voravians in a heap, like a bowling ball attempting to ask multiple pins for a spot of debauchery. They didn't seem overly enamoured with his efforts but had little time to complain as shots aimed at Phil's tumbling body went wide of their mark and blasted a hole in them.

  Captain Jones righted himself just in time to see the giant Voravian pull a small pistol from his throne. Taking no time to think of the comical difference in the size of weaponry, Phil scooped up Smith and dove clear of the blast. The guards may have been wayward with their fire but they didn't dare aim for him now that their leader was directly behind should they miss.

  Taking advantage of this, Phil bodily threw Smith at the remaining soldiers, his mind comically adding the sound of multiple pins falling as they collapsed into a heap. Before any of them had the presence of mind to right themselves, he had picked up his burden once again and was sprinting through the cargo doors and away from the bellowing Voravian leader.

  An alarm sounded on the ship, Phil assumed it was on account of his escape and tried to quicken his pace. His body grumbled but took into account the life-or-death situation he had been placed into and somehow continued to wobble its way to wherever the glove was leading them.

  They reached an intersection and took a right, then a left, then another right. Phil dizzyingly followed these unspoken directions from the none-too-gentle tugging of the glove in the hopes that somehow it knew where it was going and what he was supposed to do.

  The doors ahead led only one way, and as they opened Phil realised that the glove was finally playing to his strengths.

  A large pulsing coil of energy was surrounde
d by an array of wires, near them stood a group of spindly Voravian technicians that looked nothing like the brutish counterparts he had previously encountered. The glove had taken him to the main engine room, and apparently the creatures within were involved in some terribly delicate and complicated activity. They barely noticed the obese man barrelling toward them until it was much too late.

  Bodies went flying everywhere and there was a series of sparks and explosions that Phil silently hoped hadn't killed Smith, who he had set down by the door. He vaguely heard a number of jabbering high-pitched croaking noises but they were soon drowned out by the alarms as he tumbled face-first into the wiring with a massive grin on his face. If he was going out, then he was going to take the entire Voravian mothership with him.

  The lights flickered wildly as Phil crushed and wound innumerable coils of wires about him. Some of them were soft and pulsing with a strange fluid that burst out of them upon pressure and others were the more standard sparking and dangerous variety. Even though he didn't know the specifics of their function, he had quite hastily determined that having a man of his size rolling about in them like a kid's paddle-pool was detrimental to the system.

  A crackle of energy far too close to Phil's head caused him to jump, and the glove concurred with this motion, somehow throwing him clear of the tangled web he'd woven. The unarmed Voravians stared at him aghast as he righted himself, none of them were armed and all of them started panicking at once, flying about in multiple directions like so many marbles inside a cardboard box. A cardboard box that was now set to self-destruct, very soon.

  Phil made for the exit and hauled Smith back up onto his shoulders, his back screaming in protest and determined to make him pay for it later when this was all over.

  Wincing as he ran and sucking in great gulps of the strangely-flavoured air, Phil ran where the glove directed him to without a second thought. Well, except for wondering what kind of sticky ooze he was now coated in and whether it was corrosive.